Jury Duty: Christopher Style

A couple of months ago, when Chris still lived here, I checked the mail and discovered a jury duty selection card. For Christopher. I was initially annoyed by this. I have never been called for jury duty and the boy is not yet 21 and has gotten his first summons? NOT fair. Then, I was excited because how cool is it to be called for jury duty? In my opinion, pretty cool.

Chris came home from wherever it was he had been, or maybe it was a couple of days later – I’m bad about telling people they have mail – and I gave him the card. He was not amused, to put it mildly.

He ranted about this all evening long. “Why should he have to go to jury duty when the system doesn’t work?” “Why should he have to go to jury duty when the system judges him harshly based on how he looks?” “Why should he have to go to jury duty when no lawyer is going to want him on a jury?” “Why should he have to go to jury duty and miss work and miss getting paid?” “It’s our anniversary, we had plans!” “It’s the week after we move, I’ll be too busy!”

On and on and on he went. TW and I both attempted to get him enthusiastic about this, without any luck. On and on he whined. Until I could not take it any longer. I used “The Denise Voice” and told him to adjust his attitude NOW. And I didn’t hear another word about it.

A couple of days before he was suppose to appear at the courthouse, I reminded him about it and he said he had taken the time off work and he’d be there. And, he was actually going in search of “appropriate clothing” right now (apparently his clothes were still at A’s mother’s house.)

On the day of jury duty, he called me…. disappointed because he had not been selected to sit on the trial. He had apparently begun to look forward to it and he found the whole process interesting. One of his former high school teachers had been called and he enjoyed chatting with him while they waited (nice that it was a teacher the boy actually liked since those have been few and far between since the good ole Howard Hawks days.) He was dismissed because the defense lawyer asked him if it would be a financial hardship for him to be on the jury, and miss work all week. Chris admitted that it would be, particularly since he had missed the entire week before because of his move. So, they nicely thanked him for his time and dismissed him.

The kid actually said “I hope they call me again in a few years, I’d like to do it again. You were right.”

Duh. I am always right.